Delphi House of Questions was an EU Culture 2000 project by three EXARC members. Under this umbrella, other EXARC members as well collected and answered the most frequently asked questions by visitors to archaeological open-air museums. The largest part of this collection of questions you can find here – as many of them still carry importance. In most cases we offer the questions both in the original language and in English.
No, in the New Stone Age houses, there are no indications for stables. During the Middle Bronze Age, between 1,800 - 1,600 BC, a farm type in which both people and cattle lived under one roof became the common type of dwelling...
Roman baths were still used and maintained in some places at the beginning of the early Middle ages. In monasteries there were sometimes baths too...
Contraception aids are hardly known from Prehistory. The Greek and Romans used different ways of not getting pregnant: medicines, special positions, periodical abstinence, as well as amulets. If this failed, even then they already used abortion...
The Romans didn’t use soap: they cleaned themselves with olive oil and some sand to remove dead skin cells. Soap supposedly is a Gallic or Germanic invention...
In the Old and Middle Stone Age (in the Netherlands about 250.000 - 7.300 years ago) the people were hunters & gatherers. They hunted for wild animals, but did not keep them themselves...
Yes, they did. For example special razors were made in the Bronze Age (but before that people may have cut their beards and hair with stone tools which we cannot recognise)...
Many peoples modestly called and still call themselves ‘people’, like the Ainu in Japan or the Inuit of the Polar Circle as do many others. Prehistoric groups of people like the Neanderthal may have had the same habit...
Most settlements were probably mostly autarctic, taking care of their own food, clothing, pottery, tools et cetera. There are however clues for the exchange of goods and resources which were not present in the local environment...
Certainly, the earliest Neolithic houses had smooth floors from fine clay stamped down (it was not simply the stamped down surface of the ground but a layer of...
The Romans had a calendar which consisted of 10 months, starting on March 1st and ending with December. In between was an unnamed winter period. The priests’ task was to determine the start of every new year...
Frambozenweg 161
2321 KA Leiden
The Netherlands
Phone: +(31) 6 40263273
Website: EXARC.net
Email: info@exarc.net
The content is published under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 License. If you have any queries about republishing please contact us. Please check individual images for licensing details.
